Dravidian Cryptography

Sun Sep 7 12:04:55 UTC 1997

At 06:04 AM 9/6/97 BST, D.kumar wrote:

>The other Kannada word kanda, which is an inverted and substituted form of
dinku, denotes: young child (DED. #1411), and Skanda or Muruga is knwon as
an young boy, young man, a boy god; and he is associated with infants (Asko
Parpola; Deciphering the Indud Script;1994;p.225; henceforth I shall refer
to this work as: A.Parpola).
>

On the one hand it is claimed that `skanda' is the inverted/substituted form of
`dinkisu' (= leap). On the other hand it is claimed that`kanda' which is the
vikriti of `skanda' is the inverted/substituted form of `dinku' (= child).
How can a vikriti of one word which is a inverted/substituted form of
`dinkisu' be an inverted/ substituted form of another word 'dinku'. One word
should have
only one origin.

>There are other correspondences involving different other aspects of this
god and their related Dravidian words in light of the phenomenon of
inversion and substitution, but let us just take the other name of this god:
Kumara. In its inverted and substituted form, this name: Kumara, constitutes
two Dravidian words: Aru  muka which precisely denote: six faces; (Aru =
six; muka - used most popularly by the Kannada people - or moga = face - see
DED. #2485 and 4889 respectively). And Muruku is also known as Shan-mukha,
'sixfaced.' The same words Aru muka, with slight variation, become: ara
maga, which in Kannada denote: king's son (Kt.p.37), and kumara has been
defined as: heir apparent (Kt.p.143).
>

The word `muka' is a vikriti of the sanskrit word `mukha', `h' being dropped
for easiness of pronunciation. This word cannot be claimed as an original
dravidian word. Then we have the situation mukha -> muka -> aru+muka ->
kumara. That is sanskrit -> dravidian -> sanskrit situation. No primacy of
the dravidian is achieved.
The word `muruga' of follows from `Arumuga' much more convincingly. Arumuga ->
( by dropping initial A) -> rumuga -> (interchange of first two letters) ->
muruga.

>Many scholars have expressed that it is a puzzle that Murukan is associated
with the snake A.Parpola;p.226), because it is very rare to see a snake on
or near the person of  Subrahmannya.  But it is not hard to see that when we
subject the name Murukan to the phenomenon of inversion and substitution,
(keeping in mind the correspondence k=g) it yields: nAgaram, which is the
cobra. There are many other illustrations like this, but this is enough for
us here.
>
The word murugan with `n' ending is of tamilian origin. We can only say that
inversion/substitution (if it is there) is exclusively tamilian. `nAga' is a
sanskrit word for serpent. This means thar ancient tamilians gave their god
the attributes of a sanskrit word formed by the inversion/substitution of
the name of their god.This also implies that by that time of seperation of
dravidian
into seperate dilects has solidified.

>Note to Professors N. Ganesan, and D.V.N.Sarma:
>

>I have thankfully noted your kind input regarding the correspondence
between p and h. I would like to bring to your notice that when we are
considering correspondences such as p becoming h, we must remember at least
two important points. First of all, many of these correspondences (like the
phenomenon of the final u in Kannada, which I have noted in the above work;
I could not cite all such there) go as far back as the ancient Sumerian, and
even then, there were already different dialects. I remember Bishop Sayce
(Archibald Henry Sayce) noting in his The Archaeology of the Cuneiform
Inscriptions, such dialects as the potter's language, and so on. The main
two Sumerian dialects, however, were, the Eme-ku and the Eme-sal, roughly
interpreted as: "the noble or male speech" and "the woman's language"
(J.D.Prince). And even to this day the main two dialects of Kannada the:
Dharwad Kannada and the Mysur Kannada, are referred to as the male Kannada,
and the female Kannada, which, as Professor Prince noted for these Sumerian
dialects also, reflect the "roughness" and the "softness" of the idioms
phonetically. Since the antiquity of the Dravidian dialects go to most
ancient times, we can not pass judgement on such matters as certain
correspondences based on a partial picture of them.
>

>Secondly, as you know, there is the significant difference between the
speech form and the written form of Kannada. Even to this day the words
written with an initial p almost always (I should really say always here,
but I am trying to be accurate) are pronounced in the daily speech with an
initial h. No normal Kannadigas say pAlu, pallu, palli, for milk, tooth, and
lizard; they say hAlu, hallu, and halli. It is so unusual to say pAlu,
pallu, and Palli, in the daily speech that almost all Kannada people will
ask "what is it?" or "what are they? To tell you the truth, these words
beginning with an initial p are not used in the current regular writing
either. Text books, daily newspapers use hAlu, hallu, and halli. The p words
have been used in the old Kannada writings, especiall, poetry; but even in
modern Kannada poetry, the words beginning with p are hardly ever used,
unless the poet is trying to imply ancientness. This situation in the daily
speeches, has not been recorded, because speech Kannada is not employed in
writing Kannada. So, in situations like this, we can not strictly go by what
is gathered from witnessing the written Kannada, be it an inscription or an
ocassional modern poetry. Nobody knows how long this situation has been
there in Kannada. It may have been there for ever; and it may have
contributed for the occurence of numerous p words as h words even in ancient
times, for instance, when the name Aasanga was coined. May be the one who
coined it was accostomed to employ h words, rather than p words. Who knows?
We can not always apply what we know now about these correspondences to
ancient times. But, I understand, that in Tamil, most of the p words are
used even in writing, and therefore, I further understand you pointing out
this to me with a list of p and h words in Kannada. I am aware of that, as
well as the facts I mentioned above. Tamil and Kannada have diverged in many
respects, and this p and h word situation is one of those, especially when
you take the daily speeches of the different dialects of Kannada. Notice
that there are at least 275 words beginning with h which are listed in the
list of the Kannada words at the end of DED, and there is not one word
listed with intial h in Tamil or Malayalam. On the other hand, h was there
in Sumerian. This factor needs to be studied further. Again, there are
hundreds of words in Kannada which begin with b, and there is one (bomm-enal
DED. #4469) which is listed in the Tamil word list in DED. This needs to be
studied too. This all goes to show that much needs to be done in the study
of the Dravidian languages. We need to find out why these and other such
things have occured, and we need to go as far back in time as we can. 
>
It is obvious that whereas telugu, tamil and malayalam have retained their
`p' kannada has changed its `p' to `h'. This is obvious because old kannada
writes `p' in places where `h' is pronounced nowadays.And if the word
`asanga' of vedic origin is derived from kannada it should be after `p' has
been changed to `h'.
This I do not think this is possible. I think the transformation of `p' to
`h' must be quite recent because you still have material which retains `p'
atleast in writing.  

Finally all these conjuctures and coincidences may be superficial and random.
They have no more validity than the Baconian signatures in Shakespeare's plays.

sarma.